1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method and system for data processing in general, and in particular to a method for displaying graphics within a computer system. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method for graphically displaying audio data in a computer system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Multimedia software allows a simultaneous presentation of sight and sound on a computer system, such that the presentation can be made in a more comprehensive manner than it could ever be with either sight or sound individually. Typically, multimedia software also provides a user the capability to edit graphical images and sound tracks so that they will both appear in a synchronized fashion as the user desired. With the increasing display resolution of graphic monitors and video adapter cards, graphical images can be displayed with satisfying results. However, this is not the case for audio data. For a sampling rate of 10 KHz, one second of speech would comprise 10,000 samples; whereas, a typical graphic monitor can only display, with present technology, about 1000 pixels in either x or y directions. Therefore, when displaying a significant amount of speech data, many consecutive waveform samples are displayed at the same pixel position on the graphic monitor. Such overplotting is not only a waste of computer time and effort, it may not even yield a true representation of the audio data trend.
There are numerous attempts intending to resolve this problem. However, these prior art algorithms, such as byte averaging and high/low/middle methodology, also do not yield a true representation of the audio data because these algorithms tend to obscure the trends in the audio data. Because the visual representation relies on the transition from silence to noise and vice versa to form its peaks and valleys, it is imperative to have the audio data displayed in a manner that best represents these transitions.
Consequently, it would be desirable to provide an improved method for graphically displaying audio data in a computer system.